Is BASS PH the solution to our country’s internet problems?

Project BASS held a press conference on November 9 at the Impressions in Resorts World Manila which was hosted by TJ Manotoc

BASS PH stands for Bandwidth And Signal Statistics. It aims to strengthen the country’s internet connection by giving the users ability to measure the internet bandwidth anywhere in the Philippines.

How does it work?
You download the app from your phone which is available on Android and iOS.

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Once you get the app running, it will do a spot measurement of your internet bandwidth. It will also send the GPS coordinates and signal strength of your current location as well as determine your smartphone model, make and OS details to the servers. Every time the app runs, it will create a record of that location at that time which will be converted into a heat-map of the best options of ISPs. This will be able to make you see which carrier has the better bandwidth, coverage and signal strength.

Secretary Eliseo Rio Jr., from The Department of Information and Communications Technology, is said to soon sign a memorandum of understanding with ProjectBass.org to use it for the collection of their research data. They also aim to create better policies and programs to further enhance the internet speed of the country.

Perhaps the meatiest part of the press conference was BASS PH’s research. Wilson Chua and his team of Information Technology experts presented data comparing the bandwidth of telecommunication companies in the Philippines. In their findings, Huawei phones have the best bandwidth. That’s because Huawei has collaborated with a lot of cellular towers in the country which factors in the compatibility of the phone to better its performance of surfing the web. Also in their findings, Globe has the highest average bandwidth and it has the most number of unique cell sites compared to Smart and Sun Cellular.

More of these findings can be seen here: http://projectbass.org/timeline/
Our country’s internet connection has faced a lot of harsh criticisms even from Alibaba’s Jack Ma. Will this app help telecommunication companies to strengthen their internet services?